Special Concert on the 83rd Anniversary of the Sealing-off of the Warsaw Ghetto
On 16 November 1940 the walls of the ghetto erected in Warsaw six weeks earlier were closed. On the 83rd anniversary of that event, representing the start of the unimaginable tragedy of the Polish Jews, the Warsaw Philharmonic Choir invites you to a special concert featuring the Requiem by John Rutter, ‘the most successful and well-known composer of choral music in recent British history’ (BBC Music Magazine). This seven-movement work, composed in 1985 and dedicated to the memory of the composer’s father, is a sort of meditation on life and death. It was based on a selection of Latin texts from the Catholic liturgy and extracts from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, from 1662. The Warsaw Philharmonic Choir will also be performing the antiphon ‘In paradisum’ by the Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds, in which the tremolando accompaniment of violas and cellos symbolises the fluttering of the wings of angels taking the souls of the dead to paradise. The concert programme is completed by songs in Yiddish, performed by Nina Stiller, a Polish singer of Jewish origins.
Iwona Marciniak
